Beginning
this year, the trademark phrase: "and the winner is..." was
substituted with
"and the Oscar goes to..."

Director Barry Levinson's critically and financially-successful Rain Man
was the major Oscar winner in 1988. It was the buddy-road saga of the human
relationship that gradually develops between two sibling brothers: the elder
one a TV-obsessed, institutionalized adult autistic (Hoffman), the other an
ambitious, hotshot money-maker/car salesman and hustler (Cruise). The autistic
savant's kidnapping from an asylum by his fast-talking brother is with the
intent to swindle him of his inheritance, but during a cross-country road
trip, a loving relationship develops between the brothers with strong blood
ties.

Rain Man had a total of eight nominations and four
wins - for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay
(by Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow). It was the year's highest-grossing picture as well, taking in $173 million (domestic).

The other Best Picture nominees included the following:

director Lawrence Kasdan's adaptation of Anne Tyler's novel,
the psychological drama The Accidental Tourist (with four nominations
and one win - Best Supporting Actress), with two co-stars - Kathleen Turner
and William Hurt - that Kasdan had teamed together in an earlier film -
Body Heat (1981)

British director Steven Frears' first American feature
film, the lush, pre-Revolutionary France costume drama of competitive sexual
seduction Dangerous Liaisons (with seven nominations and three wins
- Best Screenplay, Best Art/Set Direction, and Best Costume Design)

director Alan Parker's propagandist account of the investigation
of the disappearance of three civil rights activists in 1964 in the social
drama Mississippi Burning (with seven nominations and only one win
- Best Cinematography)

director Mike Nichols' sophisticated romantic comedy about
80s corporate ladder-climbing and office politics in Working Girl
(with six nominations and one win - Best Song by Carly Simon: "Let the River
Run")

Two of the five directors of Best Picture nominees were not included in
the list of Best Director nominees. The two directors were Steven Frears'
Dangerous Liaisons, and Lawrence Kasdan's The Accidental Tourist.
The two directors substituted for them were British director Charles Crichton
for the Monty-Pythonesque, farcical caper comedy A Fish Called Wanda
(with three nominations: Crichton's two nominations for Best Director and
Best Original Screenplay - and one win for Best Supporting Actor), and Martin
Scorsese for his controversial adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The
Last Temptation of Christ (the film's sole nomination!). [This was Crichton's
sole directorial nomination in his over-four decades as director, and
this was his last theatrical film directorial effort.]

It was highly improbable that either Crichton or Scorsese would win the Best
Director award - as predicted, they didn't. [Only once in Academy history
has a Best Director Oscar been awarded to a director whose film was not nominated
for Best Picture - that happened to director Frank Lloyd for his film The
Divine Lady (1928-9).]

Dustin Hoffman (with his sixth nomination) won his second Oscar for
his role as the institutionalized, ultimately loveable, autistic idiot
savant Raymond ('Ray(n)' 'Man(d)') Babbitt who is kidnapped by his ambitious
brother Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) and taken on a cross-country trip in Rain Man. In one memorable scene, Raymond nervously told his brother that he might miss his favorite TV program (The People's Court): "Uh, oh, 12 minutes to Wapner."

Tom Hanks (with his first nomination) as body-switched Josh
Baskin, a thirteen year old in a 35 year old body in the charming, soul-transference
fantasy comedy directed by Penny Marshall Big (with two nominations
and no wins)

Mexican-American Edward James Olmos (with his first nomination)
as inner-city high school math teacher Jaime Escalante in director Ramon
Menendez' true-life story Stand and Deliver

26 year old Jodie Foster (with her second nomination) won her first
Oscar, the Best Actress award for her performance as blue-collar, fast-food
waitress Sarah Tobias, who is a gang-rape victim (in a road-side bar) accused
of prompting her brutal assault because of her provocative demeanor and dress
in director Jonathan Kaplan's courtroom drama The Accused (the film's
sole nomination).

The other Best Actress nominees were:

Glenn Close (with her fifth unsuccessful nomination) as
wagering, pre-Revolutionary French aristocrat Marquise de Merteuil in a
game of sexual seduction/conquest in Dangerous Liaisons

Melanie Griffith (with her first nomination) as a victimized
Staten Island brokerage firm secretary Tess McGill in Working Girl

Meryl Streep (with her eighth nomination, and her sixth Best
Actress nomination in the 80s) as Lindy Chamberlain, an unappealing, defiant
Australian Seventh Day Adventist mother of a wild dog-kidnapped baby girl
who is held responsible for the child's death in director Fred Schepisi's
semi-true story, A Cry in the Dark (the film's sole nomination)

[Double-nominee Weaver was nominated for two simultaneous
awards in 1988 - her second and third career nominations. She became
the
first performer in Oscar history to receive simultaneous nominations
in two acting categories and lose both awards. Her failing 'accomplishment'
was repeated by actress Emma Thompson in 1993.]

Kevin Kline (with his first nomination), in the first surprise upset in
the supporting categories, won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance
as ex-CIA assassin and ne'er-do-well jewel thief Otto, the crazy boyfriend
of seductress thief Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) who wants a repressed English
lawyer (John Cleese) to offer bail to a fellow jewel thief in the unlikely
comedy A Fish Called Wanda.

Other Best Supporting Actor nominees were:

Alec Guinness (with his fourth and last career nomination
for acting) for his role as William Dorritt in director/screenwriter Christine
Edzard's screen adaptation of Charles Dickens' little-read novel Little
Dorritt - Guinness was a veteran Dickens actor who had performed in
Great Expectations (1946), played the role of Fagin in David Lean's
Oliver Twist (1948), and also acted in Scrooge (1970). Guinness
had four acting nominations in his entire career: in 1952 (Best Actor for
The Lavender Hill Mob (1952)), 1957 (Best Actor for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) - his
only win), 1977 (Best Supporting Actor for Star
Wars (1977)), and in this year. He was also nominated, his fifth,
for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Horse's Mouth (1958).

favored nominee Martin Landau (with his first nomination)
as Abe Karatz, the partner of inventive automaker Tucker in director Francis
Ford Coppola's Tucker: the Man and His Dream (with three nominations
and no wins)

young River Phoenix (with his first nomination) as Danny
Pope, the son of fugitive parents in director Sidney Lumet's Running
on Empty

Dean Stockwell (with his first nomination) as womanizing
Mafia don Tony "The Tiger" Russo in director Jonathan Demme's comedy Married
to the Mob (the film's sole nomination)

Geena Davis (with her first nomination), in a surprise upset, won the Best
Supporting Actress award for her (lead!) role as eccentric and wacky divorcee
(and Corgi dog-trainer) Muriel Pritchett who is interested in a married travel
guide writer (William Hurt) with an estranged wife (Kathleen Turner) in The
Accidental Tourist.

The remaining nominees were Frances McDormand (with her first nomination)
as conflicted Ku Klux Klan member's wife Mrs. Pell, one of the townsfolk in Mississippi Burning, and Michelle
Pfeiffer (with her first nomination) as the reserved, convent-bred Madame
de Tourvel in Dangerous Liaisons.

This year had one of the most potent Best Foreign Language Film competitions
in recent years. Bille August's Swedish film Pelle the Conqueror, starring
Best Actor-nominated Sydow, defeated two other strong candidates among the
field of four: Pedro Almodóvar's popular Women on the Verge of a
Nervous Breakdown (its sole nomination) and Mira Nair's Indian expose
Salaam Bombay! (its sole nomination).

Oscar Snubs and Omissions:

Although the technically-outstanding Who Framed Roger
Rabbit (with six nominations) was missing from the Best Picture nominees,
it tied Best Picture-winning Rain Man, if one counts a Special Achievement
Award, with four Oscar wins: Best Film Editing, Best Sound Effects
Editing, Best Visual Effects, and a special recognition for animator Richard
Williams.

Two directors who should have been nominated, but weren't, were Penny Marshall
for Big, and Jonathan Demme for Married to the Mob. A World
Apart, Chris Menges' feature film directorial debut about apartheid set
in early 1960s South Africa (with Barbara Hershey as journalist Diana Roth)
wasn't even nominated in 1988. Neither was Michael Apted nominated as Best
Director for Gorillas in the Mist.

Other remarkable performances without nominations included the following: